Vermin and pest infestation in homes, motels, hotels and dormitories in the United States has been on the rise in recent years.
For instance, bedbugs were nearly eradicated in the United States 50 years ago when exterminators and homeowners used DDT; however, resistant strains of “super” bedbugs are today infesting mattresses at an alarming rate. Pest control companies nationwide reported a 71 percent increase in bedbug calls between 2000 and 2005. Left along, a few bedbugs can create a colony of thousands within weeks. Similar statistics show an increase in nationwide infestation levels for other nocturnal pests, such as cockroaches, silver fish and crickets.
Bedbug characteristics are illustrative of the problems in monitoring and eradicating many of these pests in general and include many of the following:
1. They are wingless insects of the family cimicidae;
2. They have small, flat, oval, reddish brown bodies, with an adult being about the size of an apple seed;
3. They feed on human and animal blood;
4. They are active at night and bite any areas of exposed skin;
5. They can infest indoor areas and hide in crevices or cracks in beds, furniture, and around ceilings, floors and walls;
6. Females lay from 300 to 500 eggs, which are covered with a sticky substance and which hatch in about ten days. There are five progressively larger nymphal stages, each requiring a single blood meal before molting to the next stage;
7. They can go without feeding for as long as 550 days;
8. They can suck up to six times its weight in blood, and feeding can take 3 to 10 minutes; and
9. Adults live about 10 months, and there can be up to three to four generations of bedbugs per year.
10. They are known to be thigmotropic; they favor environments which provide thigmotropic stimulation such as tight spaces which caress, comb, or touch them.
11. They love darkness and are, therefore, attracted to dark environments.
12. They prefer focal-fecal-point environments, which means they favor crowded environments surrounded by large numbers of their own and their excrement.
It is believed the resurgence of insect pests, such as bedbugs, is the result of increased global travel and a shift-toward less-toxic pest control. Bedbugs are most frequently found in dwellings with a high rate of occupant turnover, such as hotels, motels, hostels, dormitories, shelters, apartment complexes, tenements, and prisons.
Pest eradication and monitoring systems and apparatus are well known constructions typically employing housings or containers with opening and trapping means for the pests once they have entered the housing or container. The following U.S. patents disclose systems and apparatus believed to be representative of the current state of the prior art: U.S. Pat. No. 4,208,828, issued Jun. 24, 1980, U.S. Pat. No. 4,217,722, issued Aug. 19, 1980, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2004/0216367, published Nov. 4, 2004, U.S. Pat. No. 5,396,729, issued Mar. 14, 1995, U.S. Pat. No. 4,395,842, issued Aug. 2, 1983, U.S. Pat. No. 4,425,731, issued Jan. 17, 1984, U.S. Pat. No. 4,263,740, issued Apr. 28, 1981, U.S. Pat. No. 4,244,134, issued Jan. 13, 1981, U.S. Pat. No. 4,044,495, issued Aug. 30, 1977, U.S. Pat. No. 3,398,478, issued Aug. 27, 1968, U.S. Pat. No. 6,651,378, issued Nov. 25, 2003, U.S. Pat. No. 3,304,646, issued Feb. 21, 1967, U.S. Pat. No. 3,908,302, issued Sep. 30, 1975, U.S. Pat. No. Des. 362,045, issued Sep. 5, 1995, U.S. Pat. No. 5,588,250, issued Dec. 31, 1996, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,572,825, issued Nov. 12, 1996.
Existing pest eradication and monitoring systems and apparatus fail to address the particular characteristics of these pests, in particular bedbugs, and as a result often unwittingly make the problem worse. Because bedbugs are fast moving, nocturnal blood feeders that do not feed on ant and cockroach baits, widespread use of bait type control is a factor implicated in the return of widespread return bedbug infestation.
The other failure of existing eradication methods for bedbugs is the lack of any systematic means to monitoring infestation levels and detect early stages of bedbug infiltration of dwelling areas. Many reported accounts detail wholesale disposal of furnishing possessions in infected areas coupled with thousands of dollars spent on pest control, only to have the bedbug infestation reappear upon human relocation to the supposedly “cleaned” environment. Loss of sleep, psychological trauma, and persistent skin irritation often result for human inhabitants who return during or after this cycle of infestation, treatment, and re-infestation.